One time a long time ago

I am learning so much, each day it is something new.  Today was the first day that I worked til I was hungry.  You know what I am talking about?  Work so physical that hunger replaces your sense of your body, you're not a body that's hungry your're hunger that's expressed itself through body.  Through every coursing movement. Food your body says, in a way that makes you smile because your hunger reminds you that its main and real purpose is energy.  At the end of the day when the sun was going down I got to drive the four wheeler golf cart thing all around the farms fast as I could.  Alex held on tight but tried to pretend like he wasn't scared. 

The best answer for Apples to Apples tonight for Lucky was Redwood Forests.  Emily got to choose and Redwood Forests was Dora's card, and I was giving Em reiki when she gathered all the cards so I felt her whole body warm the moment she saw home.  She lives over the hill from me and tomorrow, which is my day off, I am taking her cinnamon-raisin-bagel-french-toast. The only time better to give reiki, if you can not do it alone in a quiet calm setting, is surrounded by people screaming and laughing apple to appling and speaking in changing accents battling over who gets to wear the Santa Hat to be able to boss everyone else around.  Papa feed Baby Bird Emily from your mouth, now!  Daughter's Favorite Sister Daughter's New Boyfriend welcome to our family.  Mama, I won!  I know Papa, I know.

Some friends have written to make sure I am okay, adjusting alright after the accident and now not having a car.  One time a long time ago us people rose up out of the land, amoebic at first then respirating out of our gills.  Eventually we grew tall and learned to make sounds later called words, it was the earth's charge that we talk.  For her, as one.  Working the land is like that, I am muscles of the earth, taking from the earth but taking in a way that intuitively feels like giving back.  It is the most right place for me I've ever been in life.

I am, I am well.  I promise.  It's fun, I'm learning so much.  And any tears that might have been there got turned at some point in to non-stop laughs, and smiling under the tall trees in the fall sun.

Everything was so new it glistened

At night I walk the hills under the moon which has been growing near full. It is last harvest moon, it peaked today around 4pm here, and when there is no rain I’ve been discovering the way the moon makes the air and the hills and the nighttime sky here all the same kind of muted-out white.
It brings me great joy to go walking, how everything in the night is so very still. On facebook I see people back home in bikinis on the beach, and I think that is true, last year summer lasted til October. But here it is turning fall—even today in the high sun working outside on the farm getting hot it still felt like weather meant for turning days.

The season is passing, it is a good time for me to be bringing a harvest in. Last night Mo and Jon and I sat on the back deck of the cabin and I led us in a meditation. We reviewed our year, looking within at all we’ve grown. When I first got here in August I was elated, everything was so new it glistened and I just walked around with a glow. Now with both car crashes behind me and my reality being so stunned, I am more grounded, not low so much as simple, on my feet. Like a colt. Sort of learning. Sure she can stand but conscious about the way her feet might go.

My favorite part of the hills is when they’re spread out with valleys on either side. I stand in the middle on the flat long stretch and look at all that land raising and falling in a great circle around me. The land folds in all different black shades at night like an uphill-going ocean caught in a ripple and painted in time. And the moon is there to say I’m part of this artwork, too.

I go walking because it is good for me but more I realized tonight because it is a way of moving but still staying still. They aren’t power walks and not even, at night anyway, jogs. It’s just me, alone sometimes or sometimes with friends. Being quiet, exploring new ground.

You're alright you're alright.

The end of a long day at the end of a very long week.  I got lost coming up the mountain in my rental SUV.  There were no trespassing signs all over all the trees.

My car crashed Monday night in to the guard rail.  Then I skidded back out on to the freeway and 180'd on the first-rain oil-slick hydroplane of road til I was facing oncoming traffic. I was knocked out for just a sec but some part louder in me than my regular head woke me up by screaming at me you're alright you're alright cmon so I moved out of the way in time.  I have never been so scared and also, now I have no home. 

It's been a long exhausting week.  It is fall on the mountain, dorm-living again.  I am thankful for woodstoves, warm meals amazing bosses and my funny, peaceful and deep new friends.

I miss my mom and dad.  And brother and sister-in-law, my baby new niece, my cousins and friends.

In the deep place tonight next to the redwoods by the stream I prayed to the earth bc that's the only thing I really pray to that listens, afterall.  It said husshhhh, hussshhhhh. So I remembered, be still.  There is no place to be but where you're at.  Which frees up the energy for all else to come about as it will.

Maybe ten thousand, maybe more.

Every morning I meditate in some way, most mornings it is a private event that would go unnoticed by other people.  But Dory and Jon, and Mo and Alle and the others when they are around and our space is shared--I dont mind being my whole, true self in front of all of them.

I keep a little travelling alter, again most wouldn't recognize the trinkets and baubles as holy to me.  But anywhere I have a space that is mine for more than overnight, I pull it out so my little corner can be alive, and "anywhere" becomes home.  Because home to me means silent and sacred, and is really about what lives inside. 

Some days it is discipline to approach and refind me, but others I can feel the deep inside place stirring with my own instructive wisdom and magic.  Today was one of those days.  The sun was shining hot on my legs on Jon's floor in Oakland, and outside the blue sky was so clear it was hard to tell there was a window-sill.  I was sleepy and smiley and had a deep sighing stretch when the quiet place put forth a little vision to my consciousness.  I was in the ocean, and a great monster wave, so mighty and long and also round, was preparing to crash down.  It was slow coming but the kind that could panic me if I didn't react smoothly and all at once.  I wasn't surfing, this wasn't about the endurance-teaching lesson of consistency you learn paddling out.  This was just me, ocean-me of 30 plus years, and so in this flash of vision my body long and lean dove way, way down, and caught the under-rushing water and let it pull me completely under the wave.  I didn't see myself when I came out, just the finesse of moving deeply at the bottom and all the way through. And more important I felt the natural assurance and calming feeling that comes with knowing how to move.  How the force of going under pulls then surfaces you out beyond where the waves crest and crash, how then you can relax into the gentle updown rocking of the forming motion.  Which is what I love the most in the ocean--way out there just floating on top.

I've done that a thousand times, maybe ten thousand, maybe more.  In real life, in Ocean City, Maryland, in the Atlantic my teacher-sea.  I love it, I miss it, I crave it like food.  But most of all, I am honored that my deep wisdom used the mama ocean today for me to hear its call.  Because this time in my life will pass me easily in to floating happily along if right now I just dive deep, deep down.  Which is what mediation does, in fact it's exactly what I use it for: quiet time and space to celebrate my wiser self, by just meeting me where I am at every day.  The sacred ordinariness, the consistency and instruction that comes as result from letting that daily meeting lead me deep inside.  The happiness that is always present when I surface back out again.

This keeps me from the obvious.

Waiting to go dancing.  We're going to San Francisco tonight which in Oakland everyone refers to as the city.  Even though Oakland is pretty city to me. This is what I do!   Meet gorgeous women to dress up with and go be fabulous.  Last weekend we were in San Jose, made tons of friends around the pool table and on the dance floor.  Mo killed it on stage, later I did body work on Sage for no other reason then her energy was full of love and I wanted to support it, and the ittybitty baby she's got growing inside.  Dory, Kristen, Mo and I dared each other to dress in ridiculous tiny outfits and pretend to be synchronised swimmers at the outdoor pool.  I mean tiny.  We did it, laughing while I hissed straight-faces, straight-faces the whole time.

More than anything I am having fun.  It makes me giggle to think that this is my life, how lucky I am.  But then I think, I'm not lucky at all I chose this.  Any one could.  Anyone at all.  Just allow for the wonder of the moment to guide your way: it sounds silly and self-helpy but there really is no other way to put this reality.  Just show up, eager to dig on the experience.  Grateful you get to.

This keeps me from the obvious, for the most part...the I wonder where I will end up?  Everyone here is in transition.  Dory's home from 9 months on the road in South America not sure where she and her man will go, Jon's moving out Tuesday and Mo left her pad last week.  Ale gave up her place and is staying with her ma.  Who knows?  I will continue to show up grateful for the experience, trusting in the alchemy of the process.  Gratitude and no expectations other than digging on whatever life has to bring.